Israel Wants a Wider War

September 28, 2002

Nicholas Berry

An American attack on Iraq could very well unleash a wider war, with Israel using the war to carry out its own objectives. The Bush administration fully understands the problems Israel can cause, and is working very hard to prevent them. But Israel under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will undoubtedly – as he has in the past – carryout his own plan, not Washington’s. The U.S.-Israel struggle is as crucial as the U.S.-Iraqi one.

Israel’s number-one problem is the Palestinians. They are on land Sharon and most Israelis want. They constantly make trouble via terrorism. For Sharon, they have got to go.

Ever expanding Jewish settlements are one prong to squeeze out the Palestinians. Making life miserable for the Palestinians – curfews, travel restrictions, land seizures, home demolitions, and so on – is another prong. Israelis hope Palestinians will conclude that greener pastures lie elsewhere in the Arab world. The third prong, in reserve, is called “transfer.”

The concept of transfer goes back to the founding of Israel. Israelis purchased Arab lands, never again to be offered for sale to non-Jews. During the 1948 war for Israeli independence, Israeli violence and threats and Palestinian fear pushed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon. The 1967 war, when Israel captured Gaza and the West Bank, found more Palestinians fleeing. Still, millions remained. For expansionist Israelis, stronger measures seemed necessary.

The rise of Likud brought about a party willing to use stronger measures. Under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in cahoots with soon-to-be Christian president-elect Bashir Gemayel. The operation was called Peace for Galilee. Driving out the Palestinians living in Lebanon along with occupying Syrian forces would create an Israeli ally and client state under Gemayel. Israel’s northern border would be secure. Camp David and the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt had already ensured a peaceful southern border. That left only a hostile eastern border state, Jordan, where citizens of Palestinian decent constituted over half its population. Here is where what was called Peace for Galilee II came into play. According to this plan, an angry Syria with their Palestinian allies, after being pushed out of Lebanon, would be encouraged to overthrow Jordan’s King Hussein. They had tried to before. During Black September in 1970, Syria and the Palestinians attempted to overthrow the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in order to create an anti-Israeli base. Israel and the United States supported King Hussein, who then defeated the invasion from Syria and the domestic Palestinian uprising. Under Peace for Galilee II, Israel would not support the king. Israel wanted to make Jordan into Palestine. In fact, Israeli foreign minister Yitzhak Shamir at a Cairo press conference on February 23, 1982 declared that Jordan is “the Palestinian state.” Israel wanted a war with this Palestine because under international law, enemy aliens such as the West Bank Palestinians, could be expelled. Palestinians under Israeli control would be transferred across the Jordan River to Palestine.

Peace for Galilee II failed when Bashir Gemayel was assassinated and the new Lebanese president reneged on the plan and failed to fight alongside Israel. Israeli forces bogged down, arranged the massacre of Palestinians by Christian militiamen in the Sabra and Shatila camps, and two years later withdrew to a self-declared nine-mile security zone in Lebanon above its northern border. [Note: I had contacts with Jordanian officials at the time and sources elsewhere that allowed me to break the story of Peace for Galilee II in the April 5, 1983 issue of The Christian Science Monitor. The piece was titled, “Israel Seeks a Palestinian State.” Although descriptions of the plan became part of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict in a number of books, Israel’s failed plan is not widely known among the general public. Israel has understandably refused to comment on the enterprise.]

What is important is the name of the author of Peace for Galilee II. It is Ariel Sharon, at the time Israeli Defense Minister working in collaboration with Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff General Rafael Eitan. Although Clinton’s Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross told me in conversation (on 9/11 of all days) that “Sharon, but not some around him, has given up [transfer],” 9/11 has apparently rekindled the desire to move out the Palestinians via transfer. For circumstantial evidence, Sharon has no peace plan for the Palestinians, has made no attempt at negotiations, has relied on terrorism-inciting military incursions into the West Bank and Gaza, and has called Arafat and the Palestinian Authority “terrorists.”

The prospect of a U.S.-Iraqi war could create the conditions that Peace for Galilee II failed to create.

The following scenario is not unlikely.

The United States attacks Iraq after UN inspections, which Bush will declare have failed to disarm Saddam Hussein. Iraq, using drones, fighter aircraft, and perhaps a Scud missile or two, attacks Israel with biological and/or chemical agents or even conventional explosives. Hussein has declared he would retaliate if the United States attacks his country. Israel, similarly, has declared it would respond and attack Iraq with weapons of its own choosing, unlike its restraint in 1991 when it remained passive upon the urging of the first Bush, who argued that an Israeli response would disaffect his Arab coalition partners. Israel now says the United States would have no Arab partners in an attack on Iraq, and so that restraint would no longer exist. In addition, Israel says its 1991 restraint signaled weakness, something that would not happen again.

A wider war will be created. To attack Iraq, Israel would have to violate Jordanian sovereignty, not only its airspace but also with the transit of any of its ground forces. Jordan lies directly between Israel and Iraq, or as Jordanian King Abdullah is fond of saying, “between Iraq and a hard place.” The Jordanian government, under irresistible domestic pressure, would try to counter the Israeli advance, thus creating a war with Israel. Jordan would quickly lose the war and suffer a popular Palestinian-base uprising, thus becoming Palestine and the future home of all Palestinians. Israel would then transfer its Palestinians to their new homeland.

Far fetched? There are many who do not think so.

First the Jordanians. Remembering Peace for Galilee II, they have demanded that Israel renounce war and put in writing that another attempt at transfer would not occur. Israel has only given Amman verbal assurances. The following is a Sept. 23, 2002 Washington Post report on the current thinking in Amman: “Jordanians also worry about unrest among Palestinians, who make up the majority of Jordan’s 5 million inhabitants and are embittered by the hundreds of deaths in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the two-year Palestinian uprising. Jordanian officials have long worried that Israel might try to use a crisis such as war with Iraq to force Palestinians to flee the West Bank into Jordan. Muasher, the foreign minister, said Israel has privately informed Jordanian officials through its ambassador in Amman that it would not embark on such a policy. However, Muasher, who is visiting Washington this week, said Jordan is insisting that Israel publicly make such a pledge. The fear that a U.S. strike on Iraq could inflame Jordan’s Palestinian population was also a factor in King Hussein’s hesitation a decade ago [during Desert Storm].” My conversation on Sept. 25 with Jenab Tutunji, former managing editor of The Jordan Times, confirmed such concerns. Needless to say, Jordanian officials expect the worst if a general U.S.-Israeli versus Iraq war breaks out. Escalation involving Jordan and other Arab states would be inevitable.

Sources close to Israel also confirm that Sharon would likely take advantage of an American military strike to deal with the Palestinian problem. One source, after meeting with Israeli Defense Force (IDF) officers told me with some worry that senior IDF officers would welcome the U.S. attack on Iraq. It is obvious that an American victory would eliminate an enemy of Israel that could be a serious weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threat in the future, and it would serve warning to another enemy with WMD potential, Iran, to forget about attacking Israel. The war could also end the unpleasant task of policing the Palestinians, a task that has caused great anguish among IDF personnel. Left-wing Israelis, peace supporters, and their American friends express concern about transfer. When I asked Norman Birnbaum, an emeritus professor at Georgetown with many contacts in Israel, if Sharon had designs on pushing for war, he reluctantly and sadly replied that “Israel will do whatever it sees best. Yes, they [Sharon’s inner circle] hope to move out the Palestinians, yes.”

[After writing this analysis, I received by e-mail: “Urgent warning: The Israeli government may be contemplating crimes against humanity. We, members of Israeli academe, are horrified by U.S. buildup of aggression towards Iraq and by Israeli political leadership’s enthusiastic support for it. We are deeply worried by indications that the ‘fog of war’could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing. The Israeli ruling coalition includes parties that promote ‘transfer’ of the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call ‘the demographic problem.’ Politicians are regularly quoted in the media as suggesting forcible expulsion…. Prime Minister Sharon has backed this ‘assessment of reality.’” As of Sept. 23, 2002, the warning had 98 signatories.]

Sharon is a warrior – the name given him on the cover of his most recent biography. He is only a peacemaker when he imposes the peace.

And the Bush administration is equally worried. Its top officials know about Peace for Galilee II, know Sharon is a warrior, and know that he will override U.S. entreaties if he sees an opportunity to solve the Palestinian problem. Phone call after phone call to Sharon from Secretary of State Colin Powell pleading for restraint in going after Palestinians has been ignored. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher can call Israel’s bombing in Gaza “heavy handed” but with no effect. According to Boucher, Powell told Sharon recently that the Israeli siege of Arafat’s Ramallah compound “aggravated the situation” and “does not contribute to goals” the U.S. and Israel had agreed upon. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is also worried about Sharon’s intentions. “It would be overwhelmingly in Israel’s interest, Rumsfeld said recently, “to stay out in the event a conflict [with Iraq] were to occur.” The last things U.S. hawks want is a war that appears to be the United States and Israel against the Arab and Islamic world. Top Bush officials also know that the United States, for domestic reasons, would have no choice but to back Israel and allow the transfer if the war escalated. They do not want to be in that position. Besides diplomatic entreaties, the U.S has developed plans to intercept and destroy any attack from Iraq on Israel, relying on fighter aircraft and Patriot anti-ballistic missile batteries. Presumably, the fighter aircraft deployed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey would be ordered to shoot down any aircraft approaching Israel. The Patriots – and this is speculation – would be secretly deployed in eastern Jordan near the Iraqi border. Western diplomats in Jordan say that an understanding already exists permitting U.S. search and rescue operations from Jordanian territory on the pledge that Washington would provide the oil that currently comes from Iraq. Because it is in Jordan’s interest to keep Israel out of the war, expanding the cooperation would be logical. Preventing Iraq from attacking Israel would prevent Israel from attacking Iraq and Jordan

Letting Israel capture the war with Iraq for its own purposes would have disastrous consequences: Oil prices would soar. At $40 or more a barrel, a recession would follow. The stock market would tank further, wiping out millions of pensions and purchasing power. The recession would worsen. Counter-terrorism without Islamic partners would not only collapse, new terrorists would be nurtured. NATO would crumble, and most of the world, including Russia and China, would lessen cooperation with Washington. And then there is the frightening prospect of a U.S.-Israeli alliance against most of the Islamic world.